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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Hi, I want to have a Slackware domain server giving internet, files and giving profile desktop for my users, but I have a few doubts, for instance it's necessary to authenticate network users with Openldap? or only mounting samba as PDC will be enough??
If Openldap is necessary I saw in many forums including these that this is a difficult thing to do ´cause slack doesn't came with PAM and it's an epic quest to install, so there is another method to authenticate users?

When you configure Samba to use OpenLDAP, manageability (adding/deleting etc) of user becomes easy if you have a large user base. You can use the same Openldap to have other user information (phone number, addresses etc) and make it look like a directory server also. In future if you decide you want some other software, like say proxy to also have authentication but with same user/pass as Samba, then with LDAP it becomes easier. To cut it short, openldap can become your one stop for directory and authentication for all services in your network.
Samba on its own uses normal user accounts which is good for smaller user-base.

Samba out of the box will support a rather large user database anyway. If you don't need LDAP, then don't use it. If you need it, then that's prolly a decision independent of installing Samba anyway.

You'll be fine with hundreds of users. I do it all the time. I also use Kixtart logon scripts - DOS batch programming on steroids. Kixtart is stable, and I've been using it for over a decade when building Samba Domains.

The best part, is that you have a very small .bat file that checks for the kix files, if they're not there on the first login, it copies them over to the workstation, then the kixtart file is executed, mapping out all public and home shares, printers, whatev...

One thing though, if you are talking about sharepoints for many users, consider NAS as the Samba sharepoints. i.e., FreeNAS, OpenFiler, etc. I actually typically just setup NFS on the the NAS and then import/mount that on my Samba box, then declare those dir trees as the sharepoints in my smb.conf.

This way, I separate out the tasks transparently, and take a lot of load off of the actual Samba Server, basically just doing authentications, so it doesn't even need to be a hefty box at all (It's just a DC).